To Light Up the Dark
by the birdman in a blue box
Summary: The boys should be dating, worrying about ACT's, and shooting the bull with people their own age. Instead they are the last line between cultists who want to awaken the Old Ones who wish to enslave the earth. They are humanity's last chance for redemption.
1. Chapter 1

_The night is young, dark, chilling. Every raindrop that falls upon the green question mark upon my hood is a tear that is shed by a child as their lives fall apart around them with a cacophony of screams. One night I will make the rain stop, then the children will be able to play and dance once more. For now, I come into the night like a fallen angel on a mission of redemption. _

-Excerpt from the journal of Mysterion.

I close my journal and slip it into a pocket in my cape. Perching on the edge of a rooftop I looked down into the abyss of South Park. South Park had always been cold, even when it was ninety in all the towns surrounding it, causing the rain to smack me with an icy sting.

"_Mysterion,"_ the Human Kite/Kyle crackled over my headset. I pressed the button on the side of the headgear. "Mysterion in. What's your status_?"_ I asked.

"_We have the west side scoped out. The Shadows of the Sunken City seem to be trying a new ritual. Should we proceed?"_

I sighed for a moment and rubbed my aching temples. Even though this group was probably harmless all it would take was one lone cult to raise the Dark God Clhulhu again, and this time when he rose there would be no putting him back.

"Is Toolshed in position?" I asked as I grabbed the grapple gun from my belt.

"_Yeah, both Toolshed and me are ready on your order."_

"Let's do it. Wait until you hear the crash and then follow me." I told him as I fired my grapple to a point just above the window I would be smashing through. Before I swung I grabbed a loose brick and gripped it in one hand as I jumped off the side of the building I was standing on.

Just before I broke through the window I chucked the brick at it to weaken the glass. I can go for scary but it's not terrifying when I'm lying on the ground moaning Jesus Christ with thousands of glass shards digging into me.

The brick smashed the window and I swung in seconds later. The black hooded freaks never saw us coming. Standing around a table filled with arcane books were six people, one was holding a knife the other was holding what I hoped was a pig intestine.

"Mysterion!" one gasped as he recoiled in horror.

"You morons never learn." I said as I kicked and got one of them in stomach. He keeled over in pain, which allowed me to smash his head against a wall.

From behind me there were two more crashes that signaled that Toolshed and the Human Kite were backing me up. I pulled back and let one of the cult members charge me, I sidestepped and heard the stratifying crunch of Toolshed's hammer cracking the cultist square in the face.

Two were down, four more to go. The one with the knife charged me swinging widely. I tried to get out of the way of the knife but couldn't, leaving me with one option: I reached out and grabbed the knife as it came down to plunge into my chest. I felt the knife slice into my fingers causing pain to go shooting up my hand and down my arm.

I had to get this guy off of me, every second I wasted the knife was digging further and further into my fingers. If I wanted to not have to shoot myself in the head in order to have a fully functioning body I would have to get out of the way of the knife.

"Toolshed!" I grunted as I looked around the room for him or the Human Kite to help me.

"Hang on Mysterion, I'm coming," he told me as he swung his hammer down on the head of a cultist.

"I'm going to be the one that kills Mysterion!" the cultist with the knife laughed in maniacal glee.

"Many have tried and succeeded." I told him as I kneed him and rolled out of the way to let Toolshed crush him in the temple with his hammer.

My left hand was fucked up; if I punched anything it would just fuck it up more. I dropped back and let the Human Kite take care of the second to last cultist with a blast from the laser from his goggles eyepieces that left the cultist smoking.

The last cultist was trying to sprint for the door. I knew that he had to be taken in for questioning if at all possible. Grabbing my grapple gun I aimed it at the cultist and shot it at him. The piece that gripped places so I could swing embedded itself into his calf, causing a nasty wound. He had to be taken in alive, not unhurt. I yanked on the grapple and swept his feet out from underneath him.

Running over to the cultist I kicked him over to make sure he was still alive. I heard him gagging on something. Yanking his hood back I saw him foaming at the mouth, cyanide pill. Should have thought of it.

"Fuck you!" I screamed as I punched him in the face with my non-fucked up right hand.

"Dude, Kenny. Calm down." Human Kite told me.

"I'm not Kenny out here, its Mysterion."

"Whatever." Human Kite, or Kyle as I should call him now, responded. "Dude, look at how that assblower fucked up your hand up."

"It's a flesh wound."

"No. We're getting you back to HQ."

I knew now that they wouldn't let me get away with just winging it, besides I didn't feel like dying today and I had the luck of letting little things like this kill me. I relented and let Kyle and Toolshed, or Stan as he liked to be called when we weren't out on missions, pick me up.

"Toolshed, go meet up with Tupperware, Mosquito, and that new kid at Tom's Rhinoplasty. I got this asshole." Kyle told him as he spread his glider to get ready to glide to base. See while Kyle couldn't actually fly he could glide using a modified version of those flying squirrel looking things that the army used that he had made from some fabric and duct tape.

"You sure?" Stan asked as he readied his ice picks that he had modified to scale buildings and helped him in the parkour tactics he used to get around quicker.

"Just get over there. We're going to have to double up because Kenny's down. Make sure that Clyde keeps Fatass in line; if he finds out that Kenny is taking it easy he might try another one of his power coups."

"Alright." Stan said before jumping out and climbing up the side of a building with his ice picks.

"Let's get you back now Kenny." Kyle told me as he spread his wings and I shot my grapple gun both of us jumping out of the building and into the cold night.

**####**

**Sorry this is so short compared to the 2000-3000 chapters I write. I am not used to writing in 1st person and usually I can swap POV, but I can't do that in first person. So I am going to expand upon my abilities as a writer and make much longer chapters. Anyway, I hope you enjoy and please R&R.**


	2. Chapter 2

_ It's been seven years since R'lyeh was risen from the deeps of the black embraces of the ocean When it emerged from the deeps all sorts of horrors and monsters came from the depths and started slaughtering humans in droves. In one day we lost 70% of the human population when it emerged right off the . The U.S evacuated as many as they could but when is anyone ever ready for something like this? We left so many behind that it should have broken our spirit from the first day. However we got a trade off: it seems that with the arrival of dark ones some of humanity gained "superpowers". _

_ Kyle, for example, suddenly could shoot laser beams out of his eyes. They're actually pretty effective for the occasional demon that we wander too close to. Stan suddenly was stronger and faster, plus he could control power tools. Tupperware, Token if I haven't mentioned it before, was suddenly made of metal. Organic metal that managed to heal itself even when damaged. Mosquito grew wings and could fly, they're rather insect like and hard to look at but we aren't judging Clyde all that much. The Coon didn't get anything, but we're glad because Cartman wouldn't have shut his fat fucking mouth if he had gotten them. _

_ Since then we've picked up some new "superheroes" or "angels" as the rest of the populace likes to call us. The survival rate for the first three years is 15%, once you pass that then somehow it shoots up to nearly 90%. I wish I could say that I could look them straight in the eye and tell them that we're winning the war. But we're short on everything, food, hope, people. We need a miracle, anything, even if it is a longshot. If we get that then…_

The door to the room that I was sitting in opened. I stopped scribbling in my journal and tucked it away in my pouch.

Looking up I noticed it was Red. She was dressed in pink scrubs, something I didn't even know they had on hand anymore, holding a clipboard in her small hands that her nails drummed against. Since this shit went down she had been studying medicine and helped out at the hospital that housed the sick or wounded. A place that always seemed filled to the brim with someone with some weird, noncontagious sickness or visions of insanity that left him or her as drooling vegetables that couldn't do much more than shit their pants and occasionally mumble something about some mountains and madness or some other type of weird thing.

"So what's the damage this time Kenny? And take off the hood, you're home now." Red asked as she pulled a first aid kit out of a shelf that was placed over a sink.

"Cultist tried to stab me, I had no other choice but to grab the blade." I told her while pulling my hood out as she pulled out: a needle, thread, peroxide, some wipes, and bandages.

"You and your crazy antics, you're going to get yourself killed one of these days."

"You have no idea." I told her as I stood up and walked over to the sink so she could clean my wound.

Red grabbed a few cotton balls from a small container and lightly took my hand and held it underneath the faucet. She turned the water on and the cold stream fell from the tap and onto my hand, which washed the blood and grime away. I took the chance to look up and admire Red's perfectly sculpted face. She had blossomed quite well when she hit puberty. I had always had a thing for Red but I never could gather the guts to ask her out. I couldn't die so that never occurred to me for a reason not to ask her out, I guess I was just chicken. Even then there was always something off about her, even if the whole world was off and I always thought someone had a knife behind their back to stab me.

"How do you mess yourself up like this? I swear one of these days I'm going to have to make a house call." She told me as she put some peroxide on a cotton ball and dabbed it on my cuts. The cuts fizzed with white foam and stung causing me to wince for a quick second.

"You know I always make house calls." I told her in a half assed and futile attempt to hit on her. I about contemplated pulling the pistol out of my holster and shooting myself in the head for that terrible pick up line.

"Ha, ha." Red replied and didn't push it further.

As soon as she was done cleaning the wound she pulled out the needle and the thread and began to sew up the cuts. I kept my hand up as I struggled to find something to say to her.

Something skittered through the vents; I about jerked my hand away while Red was in mid-sew. I closed my eyes and tried to focus on the sound but it had disappeared. Strange.

"Oh come on, you've had this done countless times." Red chided me.

"Thought I heard something." I replied.

After that we were silent and the silence continued until she was done with the stitches. Once she was done she cleaned her equipment and looked at me. "You're free to go," she told me as she turned to leave.

"Hey, Red." I called out, hoping she heard me this time. When she turned around I felt my stomach drop into my shoes. "I was wondering if…" I began but would never get to finish as I a piercing help that rang through my head.

Sighing, I looked down at my feet and waved my hand to establish it was nothing important before I pulled my hood up, put my glove back on and rushed out of the hospital. Only one thing would cause me to get that message and it was Karen. If she sent me out something like that then she was in trouble.

Using my grappling hook I swung across town, ignoring to the cheers and the awe from random passerby's that saw me. Karen lived with Kyle's dad and Ike: Kyle's mother and my family except for her had died when R'lyeh emerged. But now she would be on her way home from school. I scanned the route that she normally took to get home and saw three people in an alleyway corning a terrified fourth person. I stopped and twirled onto a roof, landing on the balls of my feet and leaning forward to quiet my landing.

I peeked over the edge and stared at the three people corning the fourth. The fourth was Karen, the other three looked young. Probably some school bullies or something. After looking at the group I figured out exactly who they were, vampire kids.

One was tall and lean; she was a girl who tried to look attractive after putting a pound of makeup and lipstick on. Her hair was black with a stripe of green running down the middle like a skunk. She was dressed up like every goth, vampire, punk wannabe. Attempting to be different because most of them didn't realize how to act like the rest of society. While difference is good, sometimes people stretch it too far.

The second one was rather short and stocky, but he was muscular and probably could have punched a hole through me if he tried. He was wearing all black and glitter across his forehead so he sparkled when the light hit him the right way.

The last one was young, only about ten or eleven. He looked about ready to piss his pants, if I could take out the leader and the heavily built one I knew that he would run him and his pink tipped hair away crying.

"All right McCormick, we gonna do this tough or easy?" a tall, vampire kid asked her as she licked over her really fake, plastic teeth.

"Leave me alone Druella!" Karen yelled.

I figured I would wait a second or two before jumping down. I want my sister to be safe, but I'm not going to put her and myself in a situation that could land one of us dead. The vampires rarely were armed, they like to fuck shit up with their talk of the undead and shit like that, but I've died a few times because they've had a switchblade hidden up their sleeve and gutted me right in the stomach. I bled out four or five hours later.

When my opportunity arose I grabbed a string of firecrackers out of my belt and lit them. Tossing them in the middle of the three vampires they exploded and startled them enough that I could jump down behind the stocky one. I wrapped my arm around throat and cut his windpipe off, choking him out until he collapsed in my arms. I chucked him off to the side and braced myself for the other two.

The leader had pulled a large Bowie knife out of her boot, who the hell kept their primary weapon in their boot? I knew the armor I wore to help block some stabs and bullets while maintaining could stop it for as long as she hit me in my chest. That's why I kept the question mark on my chest, similar to the yellow batman logo for 70's Batman; it gave my opponents a target. A target that was armored and therefore harder than balls to punch through.

She launched forward and wildly slashed as my arm, she missed narrowly and I delivered a punch to her solar plexus that had her reeling over and gasping for breath. I then brought a kick from my steel reinforced boots to the side of her legs, the pop I heard reassured me that I had popped it out of place. Finally I gave her a right hook that sent her to the left and knocked a tooth out.

I smirked, thinking I was done, when I heard the sound of a revolver hammer being pulled back. I turned to look at the kid with the pink tipped hair. He was shaking so much that if the gun did go off it probably wouldn't hit anybody, but that was a risk I couldn't take.

"Put the gun down kid, we can all work this out." I told him as I slowly walked towards him.

"Stay back! We need her!" he told her as his eyes darted towards Karen.

"No. You don't, what you need to do is go back home and spend time with your family."

"Shut up!" he yelled, I knew he was seconds away from pulling the trigger. I darted forward and stood in front of him as the gun went off. I grabbed his hand and squeezed until I could wretch the gun out of his hand, I punched him with my injured left hand. It hurt like a motherfucker.

The kid started crying as he dropped the gun and ran off. He wasn't important, needed to make sure that Karen was okay. Turning around I began to ask if she was okay before I felt something warm running down my ribs. A sharp pain greeted me as I fell backwards against a wall.

"Kenny!" Karen yelled as she ran over to me as I gritted my teeth in pain.

"Call an ambulance." I ordered her as I put pressure on the wound to stop the bleeding.

I laid there as Karen dialed up an ambulance. Wondering, if tonight I would feel the sting of death once again.


	3. Chapter 3

I closed my eyes as I continued to bleed, I felt Karen come and hug me. She was shivering in fear, not knowing what to do.

"Karen, keep calm. Press down on my wound, help me keep pressure on it." I grunted.

"Okay." she told me as she placed both of her tiny, thirteen year old hands onto my gunshot wound.

"You're doing fine, just keep _calm_." I told her to calm her down as I heard sirens approaching. If anything I needed to be the one freaking out right now, but still.

"I'm sorry Kenny." Karen told me in a trembling voice.

"You don't have to, ugh, be sorry for _any_thing."

The paramedics arrived shortly after and loaded me onto a stretcher. They put an oxygen mask over my mouth and started to act like this was a lot more serious than this actually was.

They picked and prodded at me for a bit before one pulled out a syringe. I looked over to see a paramedic with a head of a panther, its teeth long and stained pink from blood. Its eyes were golden and kept eyeing me up and down.

"Keep the fuck away from me!" I yelled as it injected me with a syringe.

I blinked and then the panther head was gone. I heard a skittering across the rooftop and felt as the paramedics were routing around inside me to pull the bullet out. Right now I was in a daze. That kind where nothing in your head will come together and everything seems to be moving in slow motion as your mind focuses to feel every bead of sweat running down your forehead.

"Karen?" I called out. "Where's Karen?"

There was a bunch of whomping as a reply, like they were censoring their speech out so I couldn't hear it. I saw Karen's face out of the corner of my eye and I calmed down a little. A bump on the road caused me to wince as I felt myself move around when I needed to be still.

I watched as I was pulled up to the hospital and wheeled in. The smell of cleaner and sick people assaulted me as my senses focused on something other than anything that was relevant. The white halls and doctors passed me in a blur as I was wheeled into the O.R where green scrubbed surgeons awaited me.

I tried to call out for Karen but my chest felt like there was a four-ton weight on it. The surgeons slipped my oxygen mask off of me and then hooked me up to the anesthetic. I felt myself start to slip and lose consciousness. One of the last things that I saw was the panther head standing over me with a malicious grin as I faded out completely.

#####

_ I was walking in a city in which angles were a suggestion instead of a reality. Standing in front of a gate that was caked in algae and dark souls I walked forward. The gate creaked open and I proceeded into the sunken and risen city of R'lyeh. _

_ I stepped in cautiously; this city drove those who went too far and saw too much mad. Things that should make sense didn't, doors existed that were either a horizontal doorway or a vertical trapdoor, I couldn't be sure. _

_ There was the sound of skittering that I had been hearing for the past few days; there it was again, what was it? I turned around but quickly grew lost even though I could still see the front gate. I was tempted to go back, and I acted upon that temptation but as I grew nearer to the gates they closed with a creak and hissed at me to go forward. Unable to go back I went forward into the city of insanity. _

_ A shadow walked out in front of me, it was about the size of a house cat. It came forward and I realized that there was no body to it. All it was made of was a shadow that two dimensionally walked along the ground. It came up next to me and snuggled against my leg before pissing all over my leg. _

_ A breeze that felt blue, I don't know how it did it but I felt the color blue, swirled across my face and dropped off down a drain and back into the air. I continued to walk forward, as I did I could hear the sound of my sisters name being called. I could not tell if this was to drive me mad quicker or if this was some unholy wail to breach the sanctity of her purity. _

_ R'lyeh began to pull me closer to its unimaginable core. The twists and turns picked at my brain and threatened again and again to drive me insane. Towards the center of the core was a tall spiral, a spiral that housed the one thing I never wanted to see ever again. _

_ Finally I stumbled into its home the sanctity of the Dark One, the god Cthulhu. In the middle of the circular, or perhaps a triangle, room there was the beginning of a spiral staircase. _

_Every inch of me was screaming to move back and attempt to climb the unholy gate and swim back to civilization. But something possessed me to keep walking forward. _

_As the fool I was I mounted the first step and slowly began to take a step in what felt like an eternity to take the next step up to the nexus of the spire. My feet felt like lead, no wait steel. Heavy blocks that can only be made of some metal, which can explain why every step I take I feel like I weigh ten pounds more. _

_After two eons I arrive at the gate, from within I can hear the dark king slumber. Every breath is a cacophony of sorrow and madness. I slumped to my knees, seeing before my eyes a key to the doorway. Unlocking it would awaken him. I know now I have but one choice._

_Reaching into my belt I pull out the handgun that I always keep on me. I bring the barrel up to my mouth, whispering a last good bye before I pull the trigger._

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**Well, looks like it will be short chapters for now. I think it works better for the story in general to help build tension and all that. Anyway sorry, tests and papers and that stuff. Plus if you liked my story the Governor's Wish please read my profile page for news about it.**


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